The transmission control protocol (TCP) is now decades old. TCP has undergone countless revisions, improvements, and upgrades. However, the core concept, that a connection between two hosts is singular, has remained unchanged. The packets are turned over to the routers to take multiple routes to the destination, but in TCP there is only a single connection between the two hosts.
Mobile data traffic, which refers to data traffic over mobile networks (e.g., cellular networks), has grown exponentially since the inception of TCP. Current mobile data traffic is twelve times the entire global internet traffic from the year 2000, and the number of mobile connected devices is projected to exceed the population of the world. The amount of mobile data traffic is expected to continue to increase at exponential rates in the future.
Recent strategies have been developed to take advantage of the exponential growth of mobile data availability to improve TCP connections. For example, two TCP connections may provide parallel paths between hosts.